Presidential Leadership Council member al-Aradah offers condolences over Shabwa camp attack
Yemen Herald News 
MARIB, Yemen — A member of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council telephoned Shabwa’s governor with condolences over an attack on a training camp, the state news agency Saba said.
Sultan al-Aradah made the call to Shabwa Governor Awad bin al-Wazir, according to the agency. Saba did not give the date of the call. The agency published its report on October 20. The attack took place on October 19.
Al-Aradah has sat on the council since April 2022 and has been governor of Marib since 2012.
The council was formed in April 2022, when Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi transferred his powers to it. Al-Aradah was named a deputy chairman at its formation.
Hadi had appointed him governor of Marib in 2012.
Rashad al-Alimi chairs the council. Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, who leads the Southern Transitional Council, also sits on it.
Saba said he offered condolences over the deaths and injuries among security forces personnel at the Al-Alam camp.
He extended condolences to the families of those killed, to the local authorities and to the people of Shabwa, the agency said. He wished the injured a recovery.
Al-Aradah said crimes committed by the Houthis against the Yemeni people would not go unpunished, Saba reported.
He said they would not weaken the determination of Yemenis to defend their country, restore state institutions and support what the government calls Operation Yemen Dawn.
Al-Alimi has vowed to press ahead with the operation against the Houthis, Arab News reported.
Those are the council member’s words as the agency reported them. The Houthi movement did not publish a response to them.
The government describes the Houthis as an Iran-backed militia. The group rejects that characterisation and denies acting as an Iranian proxy.
Saba’s account of the call is the only one published, and no independent confirmation of it has appeared. Neither governor’s office has released its own readout.
The council member’s statement did not give a casualty figure of its own.
The attack that prompted the call took place on October 19 at the Al-Alam camp in Shabwa province.
The camp trains recruits for the government’s security forces.
Al-Wazir said 58 people were killed, more than 200 were injured and 14 were missing, Reuters reported.
Reuters said video it verified from the site showed injured people and bodies. An earlier report by the agency cited sources putting the toll at at least 18 killed.
The two figures were published a day apart and have not been reconciled. The Reuters account carried no Houthi statement on the attack.
Reuters described the attack as a Houthi bombardment. It did not specify the weapon used.
Al-Wazir is the only named official to have given a figure for the camp attack. The government is backed by a Saudi-led coalition, Reuters noted.
Shabwa lies in southern Yemen and holds part of the country’s oil infrastructure.
Marib, which al-Aradah governs, has been a front line for much of the war.
Government statements describe Taiz as under Houthi siege. The Houthis dispute that characterisation.
Fighting across the country escalated on September 3, according to Reuters.
The Houthis advanced in September toward territory near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the agency reported. The strait is one of the world’s main shipping lanes.
Saudi-backed Yemeni forces attacked Houthi positions near the route in early October, CNN reported.
Government forces have intensified strikes against the Houthis on several fronts, Asharq Al-Awsat reported.
The Houthis fired four ballistic missiles at a city in central Yemen, while government forces said they repelled an attack in the south, the Express Tribune reported.
Casualty counts from the escalation come largely from the warring parties, and they do not agree. The Houthi-run health ministry in Sanaa has published its own tallies of civilian dead and wounded since September 3, which Yemen Herald has not been able to corroborate.
The government has used the escalation to press for the Houthis to be listed internationally as a terrorist organisation.
Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on October 19 to support international action to designate the group, the foreign ministry said.
The GCC Ministerial Council has called on the international community to enforce an arms embargo on the Houthis and to designate them a terrorist group. It affirmed Yemen’s unity in the same statement.
Yemen’s human rights minister discussed Houthi violations with a German foreign ministry official and asked Berlin to support a European Union designation, Saba said.
The request to Guterres was published on the foreign ministry’s website and carried by Yemeni outlets aligned with the government.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says more than 22 million people in Yemen need assistance this year.
Its plan, issued in March, put the number of acutely food insecure people at 18.3 million. It counted more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, of whom 516,157 are severely malnourished.
The plan records 5.2 million people displaced inside the country. It seeks 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
Saba did not say how long the call lasted, or whether the two men discussed reinforcements for Shabwa.
The agency gave no account of any other contacts between the council and the province since the attack.
Shabwa’s capital is Ataq.
Saba did not say whether al-Aradah would travel to the province.
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